


Dark Star

by burymeinziam



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 03:49:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/630060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeinziam/pseuds/burymeinziam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn was tired of being sad and tired of taking pills to make him not so sad anymore. He was tired of living life on autopilot; walking through life not knowing how to smile or laugh or yell or be happy or angry. Zayn was tired of feeling useless and out of control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Star

It was three hours after dinner at the cheap diner down the road, three hours after they’d checked out of that shitty motel with the itchy blankets and terrible cell reception, three hours until they were standing in another shitty motel (although this one is noticeably nicer) talking to a fed up employee with a disgustingly ugly handlebar mustache. It’s Liam and Zayn. Liam with his arm pressed tight against the small of Zayn’s back and Zayn wearing his oversized sunglasses even though it’s eight o’clock at night and there is obviously no need. Zayn wearing his sunglasses because his bloodshot eyes will only let everyone and their mother know he’s spent the last two nights crying into the cracked vinyl upholstery of Liam’s car. Zayn with his bruises; bruises anywhere he can possibly manage to hurt himself; bruises that look like abstract water color paintings crafted by the finest of artists. Bruises made up of saffron and indigos and bright purples exploding underneath Zayn’s paper thin skin.

It’s Liam standing next to Zayn in his tattered black skinny jeans and Liam’s leather jacket. His hair is messier than usual and there’s a cigarette dangling from his lips even though he’d promised Liam he’d quit no less than twenty-four hours ago. He’s trying hard to look like someone he’s not. It’s a game they played in the beginning before lines blurred and bridges were crossed and Liam realized it really wasn’t a game anymore.

“Names?” 

The man with the handlebar mustache is waiting for an answer and Zayn is leaning against the edge of the messy counter causing Liam’s hand to drift from the small of his back. He’s staring down the manager with this cocky, self-assured grin he’s mastered but doesn’t feel in his bones. Liam watches him for a few moments but has to look away when he sees the way Zayn’s hip is cocked to the side causing his hip bones to push and prod at his skin.    

Zayn grins and plucks the cigarette from his mouth, tapping the excess ash onto the countertop and exhaling smoke to his left. He looks back the hotel employee and very calmly speaks the name “Brad.”

Liam starts to interject as the man jots down the name but Zayn beats him to the punch as he points to Liam and says “And this here is Angelina.”

Brand and Angelina.

Liam slaps his palm to his forehead as the pen stops scratching against paper and the hotel employee sighs something that makes the excess skin on his cheeks wobble and shake. He backs away from the counter and folds his arms over his sweat-stained button down while shooting Zayn a thick, angry scowl.

“You think you’re pretty funny, don’t ya, kid?” He huffs out. His eyes are narrow and angry and Liam can tell he’s had a long night. He’s just silently praying that Zayn takes the hint and doesn’t continue on with his childish charades. “You wanna room or not?”

“Yeah. Sorry,” Zayn mumbles sucking the cigarette back between his lips. He exhales more smoke from the corner of his mouth before gesturing back toward Liam. “Just put it under Harry. He’ll pay for everything, won’t you?”

Liam just stares.

“Ha,” Zayn laughs, his smile big and wide. His lips are chapped and you can see where they’re scabbing over near the corners of his mouth. Liam still can’t help but to think he’s beautiful. He turns back to the counter and waves off Liam’s silence. “Don’t worry about him. He’s a mute. Cleft palate thing or something… I forget. I’ll give you his card though.” Without looking Zayn reaches over to fish Liam’s wallet out of his back pocket. Liam nearly jumps at the surprise contact to which Zayn laughs as he slides the card across the counter. 

“It’s hard to read,” he starts, leaning forward to point at the credit card. “But if you look closely, it says Harry Houdini.”

+

It took nearly twenty minutes for Liam to convince the pissed off man with the handle bar mustache to give them a room and by the time the door closes behind them Liam wants nothing more than to collapse on the bed and give in to sleep. 

Zayn’s settled on the dirty motel carpet slamming his wrist against the shiny metal leg of the only chair in the room. It’s a harsh, ugly, sound that pounds over and over in Liam’s head. It’s almost as if he can hear the bones in Zayn’s wrist cracking and breaking into hundreds upon thousands of tiny pieces that can never be put together again. 

Zayn isn’t even hitting himself that hard; not yet. He’s just mimicking the sound of his heartbeat.

_ (Lub dub. Lub dub. Lub dub.) _

It’s just Zayn with his pretty rainbow colored bruises; the ones people used to think his daddy gave him because no one understood this generation of fucked up teenagers who found solace in hacking away at their wrists, sniffing aerosol cans, and twisting lit cigarettes into their skin. No one understood that Zayn was just tired. 

Zayn was tired of being sad and tired of taking pills to make him not so sad anymore. He was tired of living life on autopilot; walking through life not knowing how to smile or laugh or yell or be happy or angry. Zayn was tired of feeling useless and out of control. 

Zayn has been sad since Liam had met him ten years ago when they were fifteen and he supposed Zayn had been sad before that too. 

And then he wasn’t. 

Zayn replaced sadness sarcasm; with bruises and cigarette burns. He hurt himself to feel and then when he was done, when his skin was throbbing and his heart was pounding, he would do it all over again so the feeling wouldn’t go away.

Now, Liam’s lying on the bed with one arm thrown over his eyes because he can’t stand to watch Zayn sitting on the floor.

Zayn with one bruised wrist still hitting that cheap metal leg of the one chair in the room. ( _thud, thud, thud)_ His bloodshot eyes are fastened to the tiny television screen watching the news as if he actually cared.

“The weather guy is kind of hot.”

He says is with a shrug of his shoulders and a backward glance toward Liam as if he isn’t slamming his wrist against a chair leg. 

Liam is too busy to acknowledge the statement because he’s too busy blocking out the skin tingling sound of bone against metal. When it becomes too much he groans and sits up, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed. He looks at the dresser and slides open the drawer. Closes it. 

Open and closed. Open and closed.

The dusty Gideon Bible smiles, golden pages contrasting against a cheap green cover, every time Liam lets a little light shine in. He almost feels peace.

Almost.

“I’d climb that like a fucking tree,” Zayn is saying from the floor ( _thud, thud, thud_ ).

Open. The Bible smiles. Closed.

Finally, the weather becomes boring and Zayn stands to his feet, brushing invisible dust from his jeans. He says something about going downstairs to check the payphones for change only to come back ten minutes later, empty handed with lackluster eyes and a wrinkled nose that kind of makes Liam want to fuck him right then and there. 

It unnerves him a little, falling in love with someone so damaged. 

It’s strange because Liam looks at Zayn and sees love. He sees a boy underneath all the sarcasm and the bruises and the bullshit. Liam looks at Zayn and sees a human being, but he also sees someone he doesn’t know. He sees someone he doesn’t know because, for as long as Liam has known him, Zayn has always been sarcasm and bruises and bullshit. 

But, for some unknown reason, Liam loves him; loves Zayn past the bullshit. Perhaps it’s because, even though he would never admit to it, Zayn is so very fragile and Liam feels like he’s the glue holding this broken, shattered boy together. 

Maybe it’s that. 

“Fucking hell,” Zayn mutters under his breath as he re-enters the room. “It smells like shit.”

To Liam, the motel room had smelled like shoe polish and disinfectant from the moment they walked in, but Zayn insists he tastes blood in the air.

“Click, click, BOOM.” He’s giggling from where he’s lying on the carpet with his fingers fixed into a make-believe gun pressed against his temple. “Richard Cory put a bullet through his head.”

In his mind, Liam can see the wallpaper turn scarlet.

“Zayn…”

“ _Kablam_!” and Zayn pulls the make-believe trigger all over again. “Brains all over the walls.”

His smile is so sick and twisted and wide that it looks as if his face could be ripped in two. And Liam thinks _maybe this is all a cry for help._

But Liam is bitter and he is tired and it’s been a long day and the strong taste of cleaner in the room is beginning to make his head spin.

That still isn’t an excuse; it never is. Not for the words that crawl out of his throat.

“Are you ever just going to do it!?” Liam snaps. There’s a breath of laughter roughening his voice that almost makes him sick but he keeps going. “Just— _God_! Just fucking kill yourself already instead of talking about it all the time.”

Sure, maybe Liam thought he was being funny, but there was no way to explain that “it was all a joke.”

_ (Just a joke.)  _

Zayn’s eyes go big as saucers; large and bloodshot without the sunglasses to hide the mess; brilliant whites stained by a familiar cerise spider web of inflamed capillaries. The way his lashes quiver make Liam nervous and he realizes, all too late, what he’s done. 

Unimaginable guilt.

Suffocating. 

Everywhere.

Liam opens his mouth, but closes it in fear of puking up his dinner.

_ (Oh, no. God, no.) _

Zayn is gone before Liam can even try to take back what he’s said. He just hears the door slam shut. He can feel the all-encompassing guilt burrowing deep into his core shredding him from the inside out. The broken lamps leaning off the peeling wallpaper glare at him from the soiled walls. 

_ (You’ve done it; you’ve finally snapped him.)  _

Liam waited. He wants to wait longer than he does, but then his nerves snap in half and he barely even thinks to grab his jacket on his way out the door. 

The cold hits him like a wall, but all he can think of is finding Zayn and explaining himself. He wants to find Zayn and hold him close and breathing in the scent of dried blood and burnt cigarettes. Liam just wants Zayn to stay with him; to stay safe. 

Liam spots Zayn down the road and all he can see is Zayn with his animal eyes and his bruises and Liam’s jacket draped over his shoulders and his bones poking, prodding, pushing against his beautifully battered skin. He wants to rush toward Zayn and grab him by his water colored wrists but he fights the urge because he knows Zayn is scared and angry. He probably wouldn’t react too kindly to Liam right now. 

So Liam follows him, making sure to keep a safe enough distance so Zayn won’t notice him.

Zayn walks and walks to the point where Liam wonders if he’s just going to keep going until his feet bleed; until one of them drops dead. But then Zayn stops. He’s a few feet away from a bridge and he’s staring straight ahead as he unzips Liam’s jacket and drops it to the floor. His chest is heaving as he runs his fingers angrily through his hair and Liam knows Zayn must be crying. 

And then Zayn is walking forward bracing himself against the rail and it’s right about then that Zayn is about to jump off of a bridge. 

_ (Maybe it’s a cry for help.)  _

Liam is paralyzed. He almost can’t believe it; that Zayn would go this far just to prove a point. He opens his mouth to call out to Zayn, to let him know that he’s here and that he’s sorry, but nothing comes out. It’s all strangled breaths and empty puffs of air filtering into the wind. 

Liam can’t believe it until he does. 

A thousand times, Zayn had practically told him that this is what they were running toward. (“This is how it’s going to end, Liam. I’m gonna blow my brains out or throw myself off of a fucking bridge and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s inevitable.”) But Liam was stupid and selfish. He ignored it all and brushed it off as Zayn being overdramatic. He filed it under things to avoid because he didn’t want to have the conversation. He pretended not to hear it; not to understand.

Liam loves Zayn past the bruises and the sarcasm and the bullshit. He loves that he was the one good thing in his life; the glue holding all of Zayn’s broken bits together. Liam loves him through it all, but Liam is tired too. He can only hold Zayn together for so long before he’s broken down himself. 

Liam could see the boy underneath it all; the one Zayn felt the need to hide away because he was too sad or too scared or too numb. Liam could see him and everything he could have with him and it made everything feel so much harder. It became harder to stare at Zayn and be met with bloodshot eyes that weren’t really there. Suddenly, it was too much to press a hand to Zayn’s side only to feel him flinch before he’s pressing back and asking Liam to hurt him. 

(“ _I want to feel it Liam; I want to look in the mirror tomorrow morning and see your hands on my body”)_

Liam could only hold him together for so long before he broke down too. 

Zayn is standing on the other side of the railing now, his fingers are gripped so tightly to the metal bars Liam just knows his knuckles have gone ghostly white. He could jump at any second and all Liam can do is stand there and watch. 

Liam wonders if the water looked inviting. He wonders if Zayn looks down at that thin layer of colorless frost coating the river below looked like touching heaven, like salvation or the hands of God ready and willing to receive him. 

Liam could have said something; stopped him right in the nick of time. 

But he doesn’t. 

He stands and watches Zayn’s fragile, broken, shell of a body swing and sway in the wind. 

And then he jumps. 

Zayn is so fucking naked in that moment with his body suspended in that awkward moment between fall and flight. He’s stripped bare in a way Liam has never seen him. It’s past clothes and flesh and raw, red muscle and straining cartilage and tendons, bleached bone and marrow…

It’s just his soul, tortured and filthy and smashed beyond repair, exposed against a dirty grey sky.

And then Liam is running. His feet are pounding against the ground and his heart is somewhere in his stomach on the verge of exploding. Liam knows there’s no chance of him catching Zayn’s hands and pulling him back over the rail, knows Zayn is going to hit the water, but he also needs to move and so he’s running until he’s pressed against the rail, leaning over and looking into the water. 

Zayn hits the water hands first, cerulean wrists followed by the rest of his fragile body as they pierce the thin layer of ice covering the water. He’s all twisting, turning limbs and flying bones crumpling into a churning blue-grey river until the whole blur of cold, pale skin disappears beneath the surface. 

Liam doesn’t waste any time before he’s rushing toward the water, his feet slipping against the steep, snow covered incline that led toward the riverbank. His heart is pounding like a time bomb, threatening to shatter his skeleton into a thousand useless chips of bleached white bone, to crush him from the inside out, and as he’s skidding down the muddy, slush filled hill Liam can already feel the empty hole in his heart where Zayn used to reside. 

He’s always felt like he was on the verge of destruction, like he was thisclose to breaking apart, but it had always been worth it because he had Zayn. He was there for Zayn and as long as Zayn was still intact then Liam was too. But now Zayn could be gone and Liam still feels like he’s breaking. The only difference is he isn’t sure if he has a reason to put himself back together.

When he reaches the bank, Liam rips off his jacket and plunges into the water without a thought. The water is breathtakingly, and bon-jarringly cold and clawing the breath from his chest. His eyes sting as he forces them open underwater in an attempt to search for any signs of Zayn. 

It feels like forever until Liam sees the shadowy blur of a boy and feels wet cloth brushing against his fingertips.

Bubbles rush out of Liam’s nose and into the water as he struggles to hold his breath. His heart still feels like it’s going to tear straight through his chest, his ribs just one step closer to cracking, as he fights to pull Zayn’s limp body towards the riverbank. There’s a light glimmering teasingly above the surface and Liam can see the warped reflection of the grey sky above, but his muscles are burning hot and Zayn’s weight is pulling him down, down, down into the freezing dark of the river. 

Liam’s heart is pounding harder and harder as the prospect of Zayn being gone forever becomes more and more real. 

( _“click, click, boom. Richard Cory puts a bullet through his head.”)_

All he can think about is getting Zayn and his limp cadaver of a body back to the surface; back to the mud and the slush and the snow. Liam doesn’t think, just finds Zayn’s mouth – one black hole at the center of a blur of pallid, slippery skin – and covers it with his own. 

Even underwater Zayn tastes like sugar, cigarettes, and blood. 

Even underwater it’s the best thing Liam has ever tasted; the only thing he ever wants to know. 

Zayn with his watercolor skin and the overpowering salinity of too many tears. 

With his fingers tangled tightly into Zayn’s river soaked hair, Liam closes his eyes and forces every last ounce of stale breath from his lungs and into Zayn’s.

_ (If not us, can I just save you?) _

Liam is straining, his muscles screaming in a vicious protest as he struggles to get Zayn’s body above water. But Liam knows somewhere in the back of his mind that even if he can roll Zayn onto the shore it’s not likely that anyone would ever find him in time. He’d be another lifeless body that washed up on shore.

Liam has to save himself too. 

So he pushes. 

There’s a mind numbing pressure folding in on his bones and he feels like he’s going to explode because the water is just so cold. His vision is blurring and his heart is racing ( _lubdublubdublub_ ) and then, finally, a blinding white light floods his eyes and oxygen forcing its way into his wildly compressed lungs as Liam’s head breeches the surface. 

Gravel cuts into his frozen hands, dirt and snow and slush lodging itself underneath his fingernails, as Liam crawls up onto the bank the river, dragging Zayn along with him with all the strength he has. Zayn’s body is surprisingly heavy due to his waterlogged clothing. It reminds Liam that this may not be the Zayn he remembers – the paper thin boy with the bloodshot eyes that only ever seemed to shine for him – because the Zayn Liam knew could be gone. 

Zayn looks like a drowned kitten, soaking wet and too unconscious to shiver. His nose and lips are stained a surreal cherry red, swollen with blood from the force at which he’d hit the water. His hair is clinging to his face and as Liam buries his face into Zayn’s neck, searching for a pulse, he can’t help but to notice that Zayn doesn’t even smell the way he used to. The water must have washed him away.

When he doesn’t get anything, Liam pulls back and stares down at the body. Zayn’s eyes are open, but he’s looking at nothing. Zayn had a way of looking lost or out of touch, but there was always something there. Even when he was dead to the world, banging his head against a wall or hacking away at his wrists with a razorblade, there was always something there. He would look at Liam and his eyes would smile even though, deep down, he wanted nothing more than to cry. 

Liam’s face feels wet but he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s crying or if it’s due to the fact that he’s only just drug Zayn out of a river. He drags a hand over his face and lets go of a long, shaky breath as he leans over Zayn’s body. He moves Zayn’s hair away from his face and presses his lips to his forehead, his eyes, his cheeks. 

“C’mon, Zayn,” Liam whispers, his voice hoarse. “Just wake up, okay? I’m sorry; I didn’t mean it, you know that, I’d never mean that.”

When Zayn doesn’t move or cough or sputter Liam collapses onto his small, fragile frame and wills himself to hear a heartbeat or something, anything, to indicate that there is some kind of life left in him. And then he’s sitting up and pressing his hands into Zayn’s chest. He’s pressing down and then leaning forward to breathe some air into Zayn’s lungs in some sloppy attempt at performing CPR.

And when his face feels hot and wet and he sees the fresh water falling onto Zayn’s cheeks he knows it isn’t because he’s just dragged his boyfriend out of a river. But Liam keeps pressing his hands into Zayn’s chest not even worrying about bruising or pain because he only wants to save him. 

It’s all useless though, and Liam knows it because Zayn is gone and he isn’t coming back. 

Zayn with his bruises and his scars, invisible to the world beneath his water soaked clothes. Zayn smirking at the cranky motel employee as he hands over Harry Houdini’s MasterCard. Zayn with his shocking, bloodshot eyes that looked angry to everyone else but always shone for Liam; only Liam.

Zayn suspended in the cool winter air, his soul bare and naked for the entire world to see.


End file.
